Shawdesh Desk:

Bangladesh national cricket team are all set to fine-tune their preparations for the ICC T20 World Cup as they will take on hosts USA in the first of their three-match T20I series at the Prairie View Ground in Houston, Texas, today.

The match will start at 9pm and Nagorik TV will televise the encounter live.

Given their strength and experience, Bangladesh will head into the tie as the favourites, especially with USA beginning their T20 journey in 2018, while the Tigers have been playing since 2006.

This will be the first-ever match between the sides across all formats.

Before going into the vying, Bangladesh will aim at bettering their recent form, which they showed against Zimbabwe at their home to clinch the five-match T20I series 4-1.

In the series against Zimbabwe, the Tigers displayed fragility in several areas of their game, something they will try to amend in the upcoming series.

Bangladesh will have a known face in the opponent camp in Stuart Law as the former Australian batter, who was Bangladesh’s head coach in 2012 and then played the role of Bangladesh Under-19 team’s head coach, was appointed as the head coach of the USA recently.

Law’s immediate challenge would be to help his charges get an acceptable start against a full-member nation and with his past connection to the Tigers, he will likely be able to give his troops some idea about the strengths and weaknesses of the Bangladesh side.

Along with solving their top-order batting issues, Bangladesh will also want to improve their catching during the series before going into the T20 World Cup as they have dropped eight out of 42 catches in their bilateral series against Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe this year.

Taking high catches has particularly been in focus after both wicketkeepers, Liton Das and Jaker Ali Anik, spilt three skiers between them.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh all-rounder Shak Mahedi Hasan, who regularly bowls in the powerplay in this format, vowed to perform better than the past in the approaching World Cup, for which they will be preparing through the USA series.

‘I don’t want to perform like I usually do. In the World Cup, I want to perform better,’ he said in a video posted by the Bangladesh Cricket Board on Monday.

‘It’s really challenging in the powerplay, especially in T20s. This is a game of runs. The challenge will be conceding as few runs as possible. It will be really challenging.’